SunCast

Lenders spook easily. And for good reason.

Their job is to protect capital, so a solar project can have solid economics, proven technology, and an EPC that knows how to build it, yet still hit a financing wall if the lender isn’t convinced the project will reach commercial operation when something goes wrong.

That’s the nightmare Gage Kellogg, Managing Director of Renewable Energy at Partner Engineering & Science, hel...

Getting a solar project approved is one thing. Building enough trust that the community welcomes the next project is another.

In this Part 2 of Nico Johnson’s conversation with Lauren Glickman, the focus shifts from what solar and agriculture can accomplish together to what developers must do to make those benefits credible and durable.

Lauren explores why agrivoltaics cannot be treated as a one-size-fits-all practice. Grazing,...

For years, the solar industry has defended development on agricultural land by arguing that solar can help keep farms in the family and protect them from more permanent forms of development. Lauren Glickman thinks the opportunity may be bigger than that.

For nearly five years, Lauren has helped shepherd policy and communications at Encore Renewable Energy, one of the Northeast's leading community-scale renewable energy developers an...

AI is changing electricity demand faster than the grid was built to accommodate it. But the more interesting question may not be how much power data centers need.

It may be what that electricity is worth to them.

If AI workloads can economically justify power prices far above those of traditional industrial customers, that creates enormous economic headroom. Could that help pay for grid modernization, new capacity, flexibility and cl...

A strong brand should do more than make your company recognizable. It should help your people understand what the company stands for, who it serves, and how to make better decisions as the business grows.

Aimee Tuck has spent more than 25 years helping clean energy companies do exactly that. She is the founder of Corbae Creative and author of Powerful Branding, a remarkably practical workbook that takes branding far beyond logos, co...

What if the difference between winning support and losing your audience isn’t better data, but knowing how to tell the story?

In this episode, the tables are turned once again. SunCast host Nico Johnson is the guest this time, joining as a featured communications expert alongside some of the industry’s most respected voices in policy and strategic communications.

Recorded live at the CHESSA Energize Summit, moderator Robi...

After more than two decades working in clean energy and 11 years behind the mic at SunCast, Nico Johnson has had a front-row seat to an industry that looks radically different from the one he entered.

For this anniversary episode, Nico is joined by his business partner, Josh Beck, who shares the load in both questions and responses as they reflect on what changed, what surprised them, and what the next chapter of clean...

Could the land beneath your solar project help finance the next one, without giving up equity in your company?

Laura Pagliarulo, CEO and co-founder of SolaREIT™, returns to SunCast to share what six years of financing solar and battery real estate have taught her about how developers grow without overextending themselves. Her company has financed real estate beneath projects representing nearly $8 billion in total value.

Laura explai...

If robotic automation is becoming inevitable in utility-scale solar, where does that thesis run into the realities of actually building a power plant?

That's the question behind today’s episode.

We start with Nick de Vries, CTO of Silicon Ranch, to ask what an owner actually wants from automation. Nick's answer sets the standard: the technology matters only if it improves safety, quality, repeatability, and the performance of a...

What does it actually take to build a company someone else eventually wants to buy?

For Jason Kaminsky and kWh Analytics, the answer was 11 years, three major pivots, a transition from COO to CEO, difficult layoffs, plenty of capital, and learning when to stop chasing good ideas so the company could execute on the right one.

Jason returns to SunCast after kWh Analytics' acquisition by Beazley to unpack the entrepreneurial journey beh...

Data centers need enormous amounts of power, and apparently they need it fast. What if some of the outrageous sums of money they’re willing to spend to get that power went directly toward putting solar and batteries on homes and businesses?

That’s the idea Barry Cinnamon wants to pressure-test in today’s Tactical Tuesday on SunCast.

Last week, Barry compared the dramatically different costs of solar and storage in A...

Buildings consume an enormous amount of energy. We have plenty of technologies that could make them perform better. So why is the real estate industry often so slow to adopt them?

Dermot Sweeny has spent decades confronting that problem from the architect’s side. When he couldn’t convince clients to try a radically different approach to office design, he bought an older building and proved it himself. More than 7 million...

In Australia, residential solar and storage can be installed for about $2 a watt. In the U.S., a comparable system can cost more than twice that.

Why?

Barry Cinnamon was curious enough to go to Australia and investigate. What he found challenges the simple explanation that America's solar price gap comes down to permitting, labor, and other “soft costs.”

Australia offers a useful counterfactual: what can solar cost under a...

When Charlotte Meerstadt put solar on her Amsterdam home, the numbers made sense.

Then Charlotte moved to the U.S. and rented out the apartment. The solar panels kept doing exactly what they were supposed to do: producing cheap, clean power. But, while the tenant received the lower utility bill, Charlotte still owned the panels and had no clear way to capture the savings her asset was creating.

That mismatch revealed a bigger problem...

Germany has turned plug-in solar from a fringe idea into a mainstream energy product found in millions of homes. And the biggest lessons for the U.S. aren't really about solar panels.

They're about making solar easier.

In this Tactical Tuesday, CraftStrom Co-Founder and CEO Stephan Scherer shares what nearly a decade in the European plug-in solar market taught him about how a new energy category actually scales.

Simplicity matters as ...

The best technology does not always win.

Sass Peress has spent nearly four decades learning why. Since entering solar in 1988, he has built companies, introduced new technologies, sold hundreds of thousands of solar products, backed ideas that worked, backed at least one that did not, and learned firsthand what separates an exciting invention from something customers will actually buy.

One of his most useful distinctions is between &...

While many solar companies are fighting to stay afloat, Exact Solar is flying.

After growing 23% and then 50% in the previous two years, the Pennsylvania installer says it's up another 73% so far this year. That kind of growth in this market raises an obvious question: what are they doing differently?

Aaron Nichols joins Nico once more to unpack the answer, and it isn't just one clever marketing tactic.

Exact has built a growth flywhe...

America needs more power. Data centers are accelerating demand, utilities are planning billions of dollars in new infrastructure, and households will ultimately help pay for much of it.

But what if we invested some of that money in the households themselves?

Ari Matusiak, co-founder and CEO of Rewiring America, makes the case that homes can become a meaningful part of America’s energy infrastructure—and that households sh...

En Latinoamérica, la oportunidad no siempre está donde se anuncia más capacidad, sino donde existe una combinación real de demanda, capital comprometido y capacidad de ejecución.

Nico Johnson conversa con Juan Manuel Carbajosa, Director de Ventas para Latinoamérica de Shoals Technologies, y Mario Gomez, Presidente de TCI GECOMP. Juntos aportan dos perspectivas complementarias para entender el mercado: la de un responsable global de ...